Apple’s and Microsoft’s weaknesses revealed during their developers’ conferences

Two of the largest tech companies in the world recently presented their developers’ conference exhibits. These events are mainly focused on developers and intend to bring valuable information like how to tackle problems and the company’s position towards such problems.

In 2022, these events showed these providers’ approaches unveiling both their strengths and weaknesses.

Microsoft Build and Apple’s Worldwide Developers’ Conference

Microsoft Build and Apple’s Worldwide Developers’ conference were presented in May and June respectively. Generally, these exhibits are focused on developers rather than customers, but this wasn’t the case in one of these two.

Satya Nadella was the keynote speaker at Build, and he discussed matters that concern developers. Being the current CEO of Microsoft and one of the main drivers of cloud technology, Nadella provided useful information.

The WWDC, on the other hand, showed a completely different approach. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook spent only four minutes of his two-hour presentation on developer-related information, leaving the rest to promote the company’s products.

Although we love the latest Apple Watch and its advances, this is not what developers want. Tech professionals attend these conferences for inspiration while they acquire new skills or make connections. This time, it feels that they got a long, and, on the other hand, low-cost commercial. Here is an article on ‘ten benefits of attending a developer conference’ that describes the reasons why developers choose these events.

Form over function vs function over form

The fact that Apple is willing to trade info for advertising doesn’t come as a surprise. Instead, it depicts the company’s philosophy in the same way Build does it for Microsoft.

While both Apple and Microsoft are financially successful, they target different customers. Apple’s main niche is end customers and its products are integrated vertically. Fans are more than willing to pay extra for status, and the lock-in model makes it difficult to change platforms. In other words, Apple prioritizes form vs function to satisfy consumers who are looking for elite products.

We get a clear example of this by comparing two products: the MacBook Air and Lenovo’s ThinkPad. While the former is an exquisitely designed, lightweight, and thin laptop it lacks some of the most important features. The earlier MacBook Air didn’t include ports and cooling elements, which resulted in much lower performance. On the other hand, Microsoft focuses on function over form which we can see in its ThinkPad line.

Here is a list of the most representative MacBook Air products from 2009 to our days:

• MacBook Air (Original) – 2009 – 1 USB port (2.0)
• MacBook Air 11-inch – 2010 – 2 USB ports (2.0), mini display port
• MacBook Air 11-inch – 2011 – 2 USB (2.0), Thunderbolt
• MacBook Air 11-inch – 2012 – 2 USB (3.0), Thunderbolt
• MacBook Air Retina 13-inch – 2018 – 2 Thunderbolt 3
• MacBook Air M1 – 2020 – Thunderbolt/USB 4

Having said this, it becomes clear why Apple has invested a considerably larger amount in marketing than Microsoft. Moreover, we understand why they would take an opportunity like the WWDC to spread the news on their exciting new features.

All in all, Apple relies on marketing to convince customers to choose their products. Therefore, Microsoft’s products don’t take as much attention, but people keep choosing them because of their functionality.

Apple and Microsoft’s Weaknesses

Here we can see one of the main differences between these companies. Naturally, Apple struggles when it comes to corporate deals as enterprises won’t buy luxury products for their employees. On the other hand, Microsoft does so well with companies that they represent most of their market. Yet, Microsoft lacks demand-generation features that make the products attractive to end-users.

Both players fail when it comes to considering the market needs assuming that some of the consumers’ requirements are optional. During the WWDC it was clear that Apple is trying to milk its current customers as much as possible, rather than expanding its market. They try to convince the users to replace their products with newer more feature-rich ones. Moreover, attempts of expanding their frontiers brought poor results, like the attempt to work with Cisco and IBM.

The conferences

Microsoft is not a hardware provider, and its power lies in its collaboration with third-party vendors. In line with this, we understand why the 2022’s Build conference was mainly focused on developers and their needs.

Speakers presented advancements that will help improve the home office experience and automate some of the most repetitive coding tasks. This makes collaborating with fellow developers much easier.

When it comes to product presentation, Microsoft announced new hardware called Project Volterra. This is a modularly designed for PC developers which includes traditional CPU and GPU components with an AI Processing Unit and an Azure Computer Unit.

Apple, on the other hand, presented exciting innovations that are soon to come. These are new Apple watches and iPhones with enhanced features, advancements in the ARM CPUs, and a very promising new OS version. What particularly impressed the audience were announcements on implementations that will make texting easier and far less annoying.

Conclusion

This year we were able to see how two of the largest tech competitors in the world relate to their developers.

When it comes to Microsoft, they make sure to keep their IT employees happy and bring them further tools to make their jobs easier. Such an approach is easy to understand if we consider that Microsoft’s growth relies mostly on cooperation. Finally, Apple’s WWDC was sort of an excuse to promote the company’s appealing new features, consistently with its goal of prioritizing marketing.